In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the sport of running was dominated by Indigenous men. Such famous runners as Tom Longboat (Onondaga), Jim Thorpe (Sac and Fox), Louis Tewanima (Hopi), Deerfoot-Bad Meat (Siksika), and Ellison Brown (Naragansett) were all winners of Olympic gold, the Boston Marathon, and other prestigious races of the era. But the first among them was a Seneca from the Cattaraugus Territory… the original Deerfoot.
Born around 1828 at Buffalo Creek and given the name Hut-goh-so-do-neh (or “Special One”), he was later given the English-language name Lewis Bennett. In 1838, a federal treaty dissolved the Buffalo Creek Territory, and the Seneca people were to be moved West. But the Bennetts and most other Senecas refused to go. Eventually, their protests succeeded in gaining back a portion of the lands from which they were dispossessed, and in 1842, the Bennetts relocated to the newly restored Cattaraugus Territory.
As a teenager at Cattaraugus, Bennett honed his skills in the traditional Six Nations sports of lacrosse and distance running, excelling at both. “Through the history of the Six Nations, runners were not merely athletes intent on ‘going for the gold,’” Donald Quigley and Laurence M. Hauptman noted in the Smithsonian’s American Indian Magazine. “They summoned councils, conveyed intelligence from nation to nation, and warned of impending danger. Significantly, runners brought messages and carried stringed wampum to signify their official role, diplomatic protocol, and the weight of their words. For energy on their demanding task, runners wore a bearskin or deerskin pouch on a light belt on their breechclout that contained pounded parched corn mixed with maple sugar.”
By 1850, Seneca runners like John Steeprock, Albert Smith, Sundown, and Strong Smoke had already found fame and fortune in distance footraces. Bennett decided he would follow suit—and at age 26, he did. Running under the name Deerfoot, he won a five-mile race at Fredonia in 1856, covering the distance in 25 minutes flat. He went on to win a series of 4-mile to 20-mile races from Buffalo to Boston, and settled into a worthy domestic career in “pedestrianism”, as distance running was called during the era.
But Deerfoot’s career took off in June and July 1861. He was running at a prominent horse-trotting venue in Corona, Queens, against a team of British runners brought in by the English sports promoter George Martin. Deerfoot ran well, but he couldn’t outpace the British champion, Jack White. Over the next three weeks, he lost two more challenge races to White… but Martin liked what he was in the 31-year-old Seneca. “As a cagey race promoter, Martin was taken by the Seneca’s swagger,” Quigley and Hauptman write. “Seeing the box office potential of an ‘Indian’, Martin invited him to join his stable of runners in London.”
Deerfoot accepted the offer and sailed for Liverpool on July 12. He left behind an America already engulfed in a civil war in which he, as a Native American, was not keen to fight in… nor was New York State keen to have Indians fighting a “white man’s war”, not allowing Indigenous fighters to enlist until 1862.
He reached London in August and immediately announced his intention to break all distance-running records. With Martin’s encouragement, he hammed it up to generate interest, holding court at various pubs, where he sometimes appeared wrapped in a bearskin robe, captivating Londoners taken with the idea of an “exotic Indian” in their midst. Deerfoot wound up losing his first race, a six-mile run. But it drew a crowd of 4,000, proving the concept a winner.
Deerfoot won his next big race, in September, using the then-new tactic of running to the front, slowing down to let his foes catch up, then speeding up again, repeated several times through the race’s four miles. He wore an eagle feather in his headband, a skirtlike breechclout ornamented with porcupine quills, beads, wampum, and small bells. On his feet, instead of the running shoes designed for cinder tracks favored by his British opponents, he wore beautifully crafted moccasins.
That victory touched off a Deerfoot craze. He won 26 of his next 28 races, before crowds of as many as 15,000 fans. They turned out in such numbers not simply to watch a champion excel, but to watch him put on a show. And Deerfoot obliged, as Quigley and Hauptman report: “His appearance was quite dramatic. It undoubtedly shocked many in Victorian England when he uncovered his wolf skin cape/blanket and revealed his tall, lithe body with his chest fully exposed. From head to toe, he played the role of the ‘Indian’ in a manner that suggested that at least some of his actions were choreographed by George Martin, his unsavory manager-trainer.”
Some of those actions included a series of “war whoops” shouted by Deerfoot as he ran, just in case anyone forgot that he was “a tawny son of the forests”, in the words of a popular British sports magazine of the time, who “means business and nothing else”.
Over the course of 22 months, Deerfoot ran 130 races across Britain and Ireland---one race every four and a half days, often at a distance of 10 miles or more---and broke every record from 10 to 12 miles then in existence. One of his victories came before the Prince of Wales, who handed him the winner’s trophy and that evening hosted a banquet in Deerfoot’s honor.
Eventually, though, Deerfoot became a victim of his own success. He won so often that crowds stopped betting on him, much to Martin’s chagrin. In April 1863, he left Britain to return to the U.S. and Cattaraugus. He resumed his racing career in cities ranging from Boston to Syracuse to St. Louis, winning more prize money. His last race was in Montreal in 1870, where, at age 40, he lost to another Indigenous runner.
In retirement, Lewis Bennett lived on his farm in Cattaraugus until his death in 1896, though he spent the last years of his life as a celebrity making personal appearances across the U.S. as Deerfoot, the great runner who broke all records (so great was his reputation that other native runners took his name, such as the Siksika Blackfoot athlete Deerfoot-Bad Meat, a champion in Calgary).
Today, Deerfoot’s grave lies near the entrance of Forest Lawn Cemetery, alongside those of the great leaders Red Jacket and Ely Parker, his fellow Senecas.
Cast (in order of appearance):
George Martin: Mike Dugan
Deerfoot: James Jimerson
Fan: Jeff Z. Klein
Race Starter: Billy Logan
Narrator: Susan Banks
uranSound recording: Cameron Taylor
Sound editing: Micheal Peters
Piano theme: Excerpt from “Buffalo City Guards Parade March,” by Francis Johnson (1839)
Performed by Aaron Dai
Produced by the Niagara Frontier Heritage Project
Associate producer: Karl-Eric Reif
Webpage written by Jeff Z. Klein (Niagara Frontier Heritage Project)
Special thanks to:
Kathryn Larsen, vice president, content distribution, Buffalo Toronto Public Media
S.J. Velasquez, director of audio strategy, Buffalo Toronto Public Media
Jerry Urban, senior radio broadcast engineer
Councilmember Mitch Nowakowski and the Buffalo Common Council for their generous support